


Home Is Where The Heart Is

by Ewo



Series: Because It Is My Heart [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 08:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20150683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ewo/pseuds/Ewo
Summary: Because Bayek deserves a happy ending so I wrote one for him.





	Home Is Where The Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> This can be viewed as some kind of summary for a work that is perfectly written in my mind but doesn't exist on Word at all. (Just a Pinterest board as mood board inspiration.) Her name is never mentioned here but the woman's name is Antheia.
> 
> PS: It always irked me that Layla found Bayek's and Aya's mummies together when they weren't husband & wife anymore and Aya being in Rome. But I wanted him to be happy. He's such a wonderful character. 
> 
> PPS: English isn't my mother tongue and I'm pretty sure that I made some stupid mistakes here. I'm sorry for it.

The first time she met him was in spring. The foaling season had just begun.

He saved her farm from bandits. They had been more organised than the typical bunch and the few Roman soldiers, who patrolled the streets close to her property, were outmatched. Her workers with their pitchforks as well.

He was like a dark and silent whirlwind. Killing the bandits in a blur. It didn’t take long until all of them were dead. Two of the Roman soldiers as well. The other three Romans standing there, weapons still in their hands and eyeing the hooded man with wary gazes.

But just as unexpected as he came, he was gone with the wind and left no trace behind.

The Romans helped to get rid of the bandits’ bodies, she didn’t care if they went through their possessions or not, and accepted her thanks as much as the cart she lend them to transport their fallen comrades.

It was the end of the affair and she never lost a thought to the strange man who moved like Hermes.

***

The second time she met him was in late summer. Apollo was keen on burning everyone and everything in Kyrenaika. Her workers had found him in the fields. More dead than alive but they brought him to her to heal him. After all, she was Apollo’s chosen, wasn’t she?

It took a week until he was strong enough to get out of the bed and take careful steps around the villa. She found him often sitting outside, in the shade of the palm trees, surrounded by the few cats, that belonged to her, and his eagle.

Bayek of Siwa was a quiet but broken man. He never asked for anything and accepted her help with reluctance as if it was paining him to be in debt to someone.

It was three weeks after her workers found him when he told her a few things about himself. About the son, Khemu, he lost. About the betrayal by the pharaoh Ptolemy in Siwa which led to his son’s death. About his quest to avenge his child which led him through all of Egypt.

In return she told him about herself. About her life as the daughter of rich Greeks from Alexandria. About her supposed ancestor: King Leonidas of Sparta (the name meant nothing for the Egyptian). About her marriage to the previous proconsul of Kyrenaika, Gaius Arinius Modestus, who had been killed without his murderer ever been found. About their daughter, Andromeda, who died when she was six because of an illness. About their son, Marcus, who died as an infant in his sleep.

They were both broken and maybe because of that they understood each other so well.

***

The third time she met Bayek was nearly a year later. A new foaling season had begun.

And just like the first time he appeared like a whirlwind, blood on his clothes, and dashed into the stables, climbing upon the wooden roof beams, and squatting there like a cat.

She never found the time to ask him what he was doing up there when she heard the noises, metal clanks and the drum of hooves, coming up the stables. The angry shouts in Latin. She looked up towards the roof beams one last time but Bayek was gone, so she went outside to face the Romans.

Someone had broken into the Roman Akropolis and killed the proconsul Flavius Metellus, a man she despised, and desecrated the Temple of Mars with this act. (She wondered how it was possible given that Mars was their god of war.) A man, hooded with a white cloak, had been seen to flee the scene and Cyrene. A man fleeing on a brown horse, riding towards her farm.

She allowed them to search her farm (How could she not? They were soldiers and armed. She was the widow of the previous proconsul and alone with her workers, horses, goats and the few cats.) though she watched them closely. Preventing them from upsetting the pregnant horses (Their foals were her capital. She required healthy foals to be born to be able to pay her taxes.). They took hours to search her villa, the stables, the fields, the homes of her workers and the pastures for the horses. All they found was a stray sheep (Her neighbour’s one as she explained.) and a few lost tools in the fields. She saw how dissatisfied they were with spending their time to find a killer and finding nothing.

They left in the late afternoon. They split up, one group heading back towards Cyrene, the second towards their fort further down the road and the other group towards the mountains. They didn’t return to her farm and she was glad for it.

Bayek returned from his hiding spot after sunset. He gave her a grin when she asked about his hiding spot but never answered the question. He confirmed it though that he had killed Flavius. He explained, over dinner, everything about the why. About the men, who formed the Order of the Ancients, and their goals. He also confirmed her suspicions that Flavius had been behind her husband’s death. It had always irked her how easily, and how quickly (Roman bureaucracy was time-consuming and slow), he had risen to power and about his behaviour towards her. Partly insulting but also attempting to gain her hand in marriage while ignoring her grief. He had left her alone when she left the city to live in her country-side villa and building up a successful horse farm. After all he had married Porcia Orestilla who came from a richer family. And more important: she came from a Roman family.

One of her men found Bayek’s horse, a beautiful dun-coloured stallion named Ankhu, close to the lake that watered most of her farm. It was exhausted and dirt-stained but otherwise healthy and accepted more than willingly to be cleaned and fed. And utterly unwilling to get close to Bayek again.

He stayed for a couple of weeks until it was safe for him to leave again. She gifted him another stallion, one with a faded black coat, named Meri Amun. It was either the gift or the horse’s name but he was grateful for it even if he chuckled at her warnings to ride this horse to death (It was a priceless gift, she was aware of it but she doubted that Bayek was aware of the horse’s value.).

***

The fourth, and last, time she saw him was in late autumn. One of the autumn storms, coming from the sea and bringing rain with it, blew him, and Meri Amun, back into her stables and her villa. The horse was tired but otherwise in a marvellous condition. Bayek, on the other hand, was exhausted. Deep, dark circles under his eyes and he looked older than he was. He told her that his wife, not his wife anymore as he corrected himself, had left Egypt for Rome and became Amunet. They had lost themselves as husband and wife in the time after their son’s death. There was sadness in his voice, but it wasn’t grief as she would have expected. Though he had mentioned their growing rift before. It had started after their son’s death. He told her of their decision to form an organisation called the Hidden Ones to work against the Order of the Ancients. He also told her of the relic that had been buried in the tomb of Alexander the Great and that been stolen by Flavius. It explained so much about the people’s behaviour back then. Of people walking willingly into the fire for Flavius. Of women proclaiming their undying love for him, and their neglect of child and husband in the process. Of people who danced themselves to death. And of people who became murderers in his name. ‘Everything for Flavius Metellus’ had been a famous phrase.

He stayed for nearly a month. Most of the time was spent with her worker’s children (Saviour of children and innocent was indeed a suiting name for him.), with resting, with learning Greek and Latin from her but also learning more about Greece, the culture, religion and their Roman equivalents (he was a quick-witted student). He was a curious man and more than willing to learn but he was also proud of his homeland and prayed to his Egyptian gods. They both shared the wish that Egyptians, Greeks and Romans would live together as equals and accepting each other’s faiths and traditions.

Sometimes he left for Memphis, to take care about the Hidden Ones’ issues, or went to other places to protect the people there, but he always came back to her. Sometimes with (little) gifts (A particular beautiful, dried flower. A miniature statue of the Sphinx. A few new horses.), sometimes without any gifts. But he always came back to her and their life together. It had grown, with time, into more than a friendship and she had kissed him one evening, under the stars, only to be kissed back. And life was perfect in that moment.

Nearly ten years later, and two children enlarging their family, twin boys (Hippolytus Femi and Nikephoros Masud), they moved to Judea as it was Bayek’s, and to some extend also Amunet’s, wish to expand the Hidden Ones’ influence into Petra and Judea. And living as Greek, and Egyptian, under Roman influence became more and more difficult. It was easier to move with all the horses, and the workers who wished to continue to work for her, to Judea.

And though Bayek went back to Egypt sometimes, to follow one of Amunet’s leads for more relics, he always came back.

It was a good life.


End file.
